Like Charlotte Brontë, she at last knew happiness before she died. But thinking of Godwin, “with his great head full of cold brains,” one cannot but wish that the gleam of sunshine at the close of her stormy life had been less “winterly.” * * * * * With her very first years Mary Wollstonecraft began a bitter training in the school of experience, which was in no small degree instrumental in developing her character and forming her philosophy. There are few details of her childhood, and no anecdotes indicating a precocious genius. But enough is known of her early life to make us understand what were the principal influences to which she was exposed. Her strength sprang from the very uncongeniality of her home and her successful struggles against the poverty and vice which surrounded her. [Sidenote: Her parents.] Her father was a selfish, hot-tempered despot, whose natural bad qualities were aggravated by his dissipated habits. His chief characteristic was his instability. He could persevere in nothing. Apparently brought up to no special profession, he was by turns a gentleman of leisure, a farmer, a man of business. It seems to have been sufficient for him to settle in any one place to almost immediately wish to depart from it. The history of the first fifteen or twenty years of his married life is that of one long series of migrations. Mrs. Wollstonecraft was her husband’s most abject slave, but was in turn somewhat of a tyrant herself. She approved of stern discipline for the young. She was too indolent to give much attention to the education of her children, and devoted what little energy she possessed to enforcing their unquestioning obedience in trifles, and to making them as afraid of her displeasure as they were of their father’s anger. [Sidenote: Sad childhood.] Mary was one of those children whose sad fate it is to weep “in the play-time of the others.” Not even to the David Copperfields and Paul Dombeys of fiction has there fallen a lot so hard to bear and so sad to record, as that of the little Mary Wollstonecraft.... Overflowing with tenderness, she dared not lavish it on the mother who should have been so ready to receive it. Instead of the confidence which should exist between mother and daughter, there was in their case nothing but cold formality. Nor was there for her much compensation in the occasional caresses of her father. Sensitive to a fault, she could not forgive his blows and unkindness so quickly as to be able to enjoy his smiles and favors. Moreover, she had little chance of finding, without, the devotion and gentle care which were denied to her within her own family. Mr. Wollstonecraft remained so short a time in each locality in which he made his home that his wife saw but little of her relations and old acquaintances; while no sooner had his children made new friends, than they were separated from them. [Sidenote: Friendship with Fanny Blood.]